


Before We All Burn

by MaryPSue



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 06:52:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13565172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: Stan and Rick and California on fire.





	Before We All Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Suggested listening: “Grapevine Fires” by Death Cab for Cutie; “Forest Fire” by Astronautalis.

The miles of asphalt bleed summer heat up into the yellow air.

Rick pulls right, swerving around the back end of a U-Haul trailer that’s rammed up on the median. Stan tightens his arms around Rick’s toothpick waist, trying not to grind his back teeth together as they scrape between two huge pickup trucks, barely missing getting whacked in the head with both mirrors. Rick was right, the highways are clogged solid and the bike can get through way easier than Stan’s land yacht, but Stan still misses the reassuring length of the Stanleymobile’s nose and the bulk of its steel frame between him and the pavement. It doesn’t help that Rick drives like he’s challenging himself not to wipe out. 

The wall of smoke ahead looms over the freeway like a tidal wave.

Stan buries his face in Rick’s shoulder, breathes in the smell of leather and sweat, exhaust and something sharp and chemical that always seems to hang around Rick like some kind of vile, science-y cologne. It only barely blocks out the constant, lingering smell of California on fire. 

The engine growls as Rick kicks it up a gear, and the bike shoots forward, tearing down the freeway towards the burning horizon. 

...

It feels like hours before Rick pulls off on a ramp that leads down into a gasoline alley. The plumes of smoke on the horizon don’t look any closer than they did when they’d started their drive. They almost look small, even though they’re swallowing the whole sky. The fires must be huge this year. Stan takes a moment of silence in memory of all the burnt-out vineyards, all the grapes that’ll never make it to becoming wine. 

They stop at three different gas stations before Rick finds one that still has gas. Stan heads in to the convenience store while Rick is fueling up the bike. The shelves look pretty picked over already, but Stan picks up a pack of bottled water and stuffs his pockets with chocolate bars. He deliberates over the lighters, and then grabs one of those, too, a shiny fake-chrome affair made to look like a little pistol. 

There’s an old portable TV behind the counter, crackling static over a rerun of some sitcom. The sound’s off, the picture nearly indistinguishable. The screen’s blue light reflects in the scratched clear plastic over the lottery tickets on the counter. 

Stan glances back over his shoulder, out at Rick by the pumps, and heads for the back wall and the liquor.

...

As they climb into the hills, the huge dirty billows of smoke in the distance start turning into a grey-yellow haze, ash snowing onto their shoulders. Rick pulls up his bandana over his mouth and nose, but every breath still reeks, still scrapes down his throat like sandpaper. 

They’re pulled over in the parking lot of a strip mall. Stan’s going to town on a hoagie he picked up a service station or two ago, spit and bits of soggy shredded lettuce flying and catching in the scruff he’s started to accumulate along his chin. 

“Think the - the Hollywood sign’s gone up yet?” Rick asks, and Stan stops mid-bite to turn and give him a dirty look. “What? I-I’m just wondering.”

Stan looks at him, for a moment, with his brow furrowed like he’s trying to see the magic picture in a paisley wallpaper. Then he brushes a hand across his mouth, temporarily dislodging the lettuce particulate, and says, “Doesn’t your kid go to school somewhere in the Hollywood hills?”

The plate windows of the strip mall are all reflecting the sky. Looks like the building’s on fire. 

“North Hollywood,” Rick grunts. “What’s, what’s that got to do with your - your idiot brother?”

Stan shrugs one shoulder, practised casual, like this just came to him off the top of his head. “We’re headed that way anyway, might as well -”

“Don’t go - go g-getting all sentimental on me, Pines,” Rick snaps, kicks up and away from leaning against the bike. “You start _going_ _back_   _for people_ , that’s - that’s when you start getting p-picked off one by one.”

Stan doesn’t move, doesn’t turn to look at Rick.

“We’re goin’ back for Ford,” he says, finally, heavily.

“No, _you’re_  going back for Fo _uuuurp_ rd,” Rick says. “ _I’m_  looting your stupid brother’s lab for portal generator parts. If anything’s left that's n-not - not - hasn’t been crispy-fried.”

There’s a certain slope that Stan’s shoulders get when he’s going down some deep dark rabbit hole in his head. Rick has learned how to recognise the signs, and how to tune them out.

“Finish your sandwich,” he says, finally, flopping back against the bike. “We gotta - we gotta go. We gotta get moving.”

Stan doesn’t say anything. 

Rick bends down, picks out a decent-sized pebble from the gravel strewn across the lot, and throws it idly into the plate-glass window of the nearest storefront. It shatters with a satisfying smash, the yellow glare exploding into a thousand fragments and leaving a gaping dark hole where the fiery sky’s reflection had been.

Stan still doesn’t turn around.

...

The fires have been raging for months, now. No one’s holding them back. No one could, even if they’d been there to try. California on a spit, shishkebabed. Out of the frying pan and into the apocalyptic inferno. Even the wind is hot, scouring the dead streets of Los Angeles like a sandblaster mixed with a furnace. Rain doesn’t fall. Might be boiled to steam in the atmosphere. 

It’s suicide, riding towards it. The long, crazed lines of cars they speed through, abandoned in the rush to evacuate, all have their noses pointed south, away from the heart of the city. Away from the dull, distant roar of the flames. Big, ugly, rusting testaments to the power of hope.

Stan thinks his brother is up there, somehow, still alive. That the fire’s just drawn a line between California and Oregon that he only needs the right kind of miracle to cross.

Rick thinks Stan is out of his idiot mind.

It’s just simple physics. Even if Stan were right - well, Stan isn’t right. A fire like this one spreads like, well, wildfire, catches treetops, travels miles, comes down in front of people fleeing. A fire like this one can fly. There’s nothing left alive north of Hollywood.

There’s nothing left alive at all.

LA is quiet, for once. Eerily so. Stan’s quiet too, his grip around Rick’s waist as tight as ever but his face turned away, like he’s trying not to get too close. It’s a nice change. Maybe Rick’s mean, but if he wasn’t, Stan’d be stuck to him like a remora. Stan can get so...sentimental. And the whole romance thing’s never been what Rick signed up for.

...

They end up stopping in North Hollywood, after all. The wind shifts, and suddenly they're in the middle of a blizzard of ash, so thick that the bike slithers wildly across the road. Stan can't see a foot in front of his face for what looks like dirty snow. It stinks of burning, stings his eyes until he wouldn't have been able to see through his tears anyway. For one horrible moment, choking on a mouthful of ashes, he thinks they're going to have to turn back.

They end up taking refuge in a fancy-ass liquor store instead, Rick working some mechanical magic on the lock with something that looks like a radioactive garage door opener. He shuts the door behind them, and locks it again, the iron gate slamming into place. The wind batters against the glass for a moment like an enraged animal, furious about losing its prey, before it dies down and all that's left is the soft silence of a world muffled by ash.

"You had that thing the whole time?" Stan asks, waving at the thing Rick used to pick the lock. "You smashed three glass doors and two windows when we stopped for gas."

"Yeah, because we didn't need a door to shut behind us then," Rick says, sounding annoyed, but Stan notices the jerky little glance he shoots in the direction of the door. "What, you - you w-want me to waste all my juice on opening _glass_   _doors_? That's what rocks are for." He gives the iron gate one last bump with his hip, as if making sure it's still there, before walking past Stan and into the nearest aisle. "Whoa, check out this selection! Wanna get fu _uuuuurp_ ucked up on thousand-dollar vodka?"

Stan doesn't move. The world outside the store's huge plate-glass windows is a flat sheet of greyish white. Like everything's been erased.

There's a TV behind the counter. It's on, spitting static and an earsplitting beep. The test pattern that covers its screen wobbles, but doesn't change. Stan reaches over and turns it off.

"Pines?" Rick says, and maybe Stan just fools himself into thinking there's something almost like concern in his voice, because when he turns around Rick just holds a glass bottle the size of a small child in the shape of a skeleton out at him. "Looks like we're gonna be here for a - for a while, might as well make ourselves comfortable."

Stan thinks, briefly and inexplicably, of a much younger Ford, excitedly telling Stan what he'd just been reading about Pompeii. About a storm of ash, floating down to bury an unsuspecting city alive. It wasn't the lava that killed people, Stan remembers being surprised to hear. It was the ash.

"Sure," he says, reaching a hand out for the bottle. " 's not like I got any better ideas."

...

"As soon as I get my hands on - on - on a working processor core, I'm out of this fucking - landfill of a dimension," Rick proclaims, solemnly, to the hissing air conditioner overhead. He leans back, his head knocking against the shelf behind him, Stan can tell from the ominous tinkling rattle of bottles to his left. It feels pleasantly like somebody else's problem. "What a waste of meta _uuurp_ physical space. You know - you know this shithole doesn't even have a McFleebles? Only the biggest fast-food chain in the multiverse, and - and we don't even have _one_." He sniffs into the humourous donkey-shaped bottle of tequila he'd found somewhere. "This - this - this'd be better with a real lime and some salt, but just being honest, it still wouldn't be any good."

Stan tries to keep his gaze from getting sucked back to the swirling, dirty blankness outside. He fails.

"Definitely not - seventy-six dollars' worth," Rick goes on, his voice blurring into a reassuring drone in the background. The swirling ash outside is almost hypnotic. Stan keeps thinking he catches glimpses of blue sky, but it's a mirage. Has to be. "If that crank - that Dr. Crankenstein's monster your asshole brother built in his basement hadn't - hadn't blown out my portal gun, we coulda been in C-308 by now, that's - they're a dimension that really knows their tequila -"

"I shouldn'ta taken the book," Stan says, hollowly, not really caring that he's interrupted Rick. Stan's been hanging around him long enough to know when Rick actually wants people to listen and when he's just running his mouth to hear the sound of his own voice.

Like Stan expected, Rick drops the train of thought mid-sentence. "Yeah, well, you did. Little late now to go getting buyer's remorse on the whole - whole 'trusting people' thing."

"I shoulda known something was wrong," Stan presses on, trying to ignore Rick's words. Now that he's said it, admitted it, it feels like everything he's been sitting on since the portal opened is spilling out, and Stan can't seem to stop it. "He's my twin brother. I shoulda known something wasn't right, shoulda stayed, shoulda helped him somehow instead of just - taking that stupid book and leaving. And now he could be dead and I -" He cuts his own sentence off. Neither of them are drunk enough yet to handle Stan crying.

There's a sloshing sound beside him and a hollow, glassy clink that tells Stan Rick's taken another swig of the shitty tequila.

"Well, just from - just based on what I know about - about Bill Cipher, he'll keep Ford around as long as possible," Rick says, in what's probably supposed to be a careless tone of voice. "He'll wanna gloat."

"Ford said taking the book would stop him," Stan says, heavily.

"Yeah, well, your - your dumbass genius twin also thought he could trust a flying dream triangle," Rick snaps. "He's an idiot. And you're an idiot for - for listening to him," he adds, like an afterthought.

Stan doesn't have anything to say to that. He stares out the window.

After a minute, Rick jabs him in the ribs with one bony elbow.

"When this clears up," he says, nodding towards the storm of ash swirling outside, "let's - we gotta break into some - some celebrity's mansion. Take a piss in their pool, steal hair out of their shower drain, fuck on their - I don't know, bearskin rug, or whatever celebrities do their fucking on -"

"If you don't wanna keep going north, you can turn around," Stan says. His voice sounds leaden even on his own ears. "Just leave me here. I can hotwire a car, I'll figure something out."

"Wow, way to - to - to _uuurp_  kill the vibe," Rick complains. "Just a - it was just an idea, just a suggestion, just - just p-putting it out there."

"Yeah, got it," Stan grumbles. "Not the time."

He shoots once last, long look out the window, before wrenching his gaze away, turning to Rick. "Gimme some of that tequila though, and we'll see."

...

It's much later when the wind shifts, and suddenly there's a world outside the liquor store again. Everything is stained black and silver-grey, and the sky's still obscured with a grimy yellow haze, but Stan can see the sun through it.

"We really shoulda brought the bike in with us," Stan says, looking at the thick drift of ash that's settled over it. "Think it'll run okay?"

For the first time since they'd started this trip, Rick actually looks upset. He kicks one of the bike's tires halfheartedly, and then jams both hands into his pockets, stomping away.

The liquor store is near the top of a hill, looking down the street below. Rick stops at the edge of the parking lot, glaring along the length of the street.

After a moment’s deliberation, Stan goes to stand beside him.

“This a private brooding session, or can anybody join?” he asks. Rick huffs out a surprised half-laugh, and shifts over to make room for Stan.

“ ‘Brooding session’?”

“Yeah, y’know, the whole badass pose, staring into the distance...” Stan shrugs one shoulder. Rick barks out a real laugh, punching Stan in the arm.

The whole street is coated in a fine layer of ash. Everything looks like it’s made out of paper, half-burned. The air stinks, but there’s patches of blue sky visible now and then through the shifting yellow haze overhead. 

Stan takes a slug of the whiskey he’d brought over with him, and passes the bottle over to Rick. Rick takes it without a word, without looking at Stan, chugs it for just long enough for Stan to start shifting from impressed into worried, and then surfaces with an enormous belch. 

“Shit, that’s - that’s the good stuff,” Rick says, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his leather jacket. He still doesn’t look at Stan, staring at the silent street for a moment before he speaks again. “You really think there’s anybody left out there?” 

Stan opens his mouth to say _yes_ , and then looks at Rick’s face, and shuts it again.

“I mean, those eye things with batwings -” he starts, and then huffs out a sigh. “I dunno. But I figure, if they - if Ford _is_  still up there...”

Rick doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, except to raise the bottle to his mouth again.

“I’m goin’ north,” Stan says, finally. “You do whatever you want. But - maybe it’s stupid, but I’m goin’.”

“Don’t be - don’t be an _uuuurp_ asshole,” Rick says. “You wouldn’t m-make it five miles without me. _And_  it’s my bike.”

Stan steals a sidelong glance at Rick. “That mean you’re coming with me, or...”

“Of course I’m c-coming with you. Did you - what, you thought I could pull another processor core from my - out of my ass?”

“I don’t know _what_  you got stuffed up there,” Stan says, and Rick punches him in the arm again, this time hard enough to hurt, before passing him the bottle.

Stan takes another swig, feeling it like an ember of warmth sliding down his throat. Rick’s right, it is the good shit. Definitely better than the tequila, anyway.

“Thanks,” he says, before he can stop himself.

Rick snorts. “Thank me _after_  we drive straight into the - the - the b-biggest wildfire in California history.”

“Nah, not for that,” Stan says. “Thanks for...I dunno. Sticking around?” He takes another swig of the whiskey, coughing when some of it goes the wrong way. "Means something, to have somebody with you at the end of the world."

Rick’s so quiet for so long that Stan has to look over to make sure he’s still there.

“No it doesn’t,” he says, finally, when he notices Stan looking. “Meaning is a - a - a human invention. Nothing means anything.” He grabs the bottle from Stan, takes a long pull, and says, grudgingly, “But if I had to get stuck with some - some schmuck in an _uurp_ ocalyptic disaster zone...could’ve picked somebody worse.”

Stan looks back down the street. The sun chooses that moment to slip behind a dirty smear of smoke, but it doesn’t stop the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“We should get moving,” he says, at last. “Gonna take a while to dig out the bike.”


End file.
